


Night Work

by Fontainebleau



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Dreams, M/M, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:16:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8356810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fontainebleau/pseuds/Fontainebleau
Summary: Goodnight dreams.





	

The war’s over, but it’s never over. Goodnight’s private theory is, there’s a place where it’s going on forever, and some nights he’s recruited again, needed to take his place and play his part in a battalion of dreamers and ghosts.

Tonight he’s lying in his post, settling his rifle on its rest. He’s being given orders, but he can’t hear them properly, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. The sights are jumping and squirming, and there’s a crowd of men behind him, just over his shoulder. He knows it’s him they’re talking about, it’s distracting. He’s getting hot, his coat’s too tight, and he starts to fire into the haze at the figures impossibly small and far away. The boy next to him is bleeding, flailing, and he can’t stop it, can’t save him: a voice says sudden and loud in his ear, ‘We’ll need to hammer their eyes shut,’ and Goodnight spreads his wings over the battlefield, choking up bullets, grieving mothers rising up in clouds from the corpses laid out in the square.

He can hear them croak and murmur as they spiral up to meet him; their dark feathers engulf him, smelling of leather and oranges. Time stutters and he’s in the post again, picking up his rifle and settling it on the rest. The butt fits firm and steady against his shoulder, the walnut stock is smooth and warm under his hands. He presses his cheek against the golden wood and curls his arms to hug it close. Someone takes his arm to steady him as he steps down from the bank, and now he’s on the river, on the raft they used to pole out when he was a boy. The wind is warm on his throat and the Spanish moss tickles his cheek as he lies down on his back and they push gently out onto the sluggish green water. There’s a crescent moon among the trees like the flash of a smile, like a silver pin, and Goodnight is sleeping peacefully as the river carries him downstream.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel so sorry for poor Goody when he has to wake up terrified all the time.
> 
> Way back when, I used to read a lot of J.T. Edson cowboy books, and one of them was called 'Goodnight's Dream', about a Colonel Charles Goodnight. I like to think he was a relative.


End file.
